February022013

30-second animation of the changes in U.S. historical county boundaries,
1629 – 2000:

American Newspapers and Historical County Boundaries (1689-2000):

This visualization correlates the following data: 1) A database of newspapers published in the United States from the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America database, prepared and generously shared by the Rural West Initiative, Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University. — 2) The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries provided by The Newberry Library’ Dr. William M. Scholl Center for American History and Culture.

German Language Newspapers in the US:

This animation is taken from the interactive data visualization of the Library of Congress’ “Chronicling America” directory of US newspapers. It shows all German-language newspapers in the US from 1690 to 2011:

January312013

In August of 1966, 2 years prior to the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick wrote to the vice president of his production company and asked whether IBM — a company with whom Kubrick consulted during production, and whose logo briefly appears in the film — were aware of HAL’s murderous actions in the story. His letter, and Roger Caras’s reply, can be seen below.

It’s worth noting that both Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke have since denied that HAL represented IBM, and have claimed that the “one-letter shift” between the names “HAL” and “IBM” is purely coincidental.